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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang="EN-CA" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Dear GLIMSListers – The IACS Working Group on the Randolph Glacier Inventory and Infrastructure for Glacier Monitoring is happy to be able to announce the release of version 5.0 of the Randolph Glacier Inventory, now available at <a href="http://glims.org/RGI/index.html">http://glims.org/RGI/index.html</a> with its accompanying Technical Note. Version 5.0 has completely new coverage of most of Asia, updates in the Pyrenees and Labrador, and corrections and improvements elsewhere. As in version 4.0, more than 99% of the glaciers are accompanied by hypsometric data, and the proportion with date information now also exceeds 99%. The number of glaciers in the Randolph inventory has increased to 211,000 and their total area has decreased to 705,400 km^2.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The inventory now includes links to some of the glaciers for which mass-balance measurements are recorded in the Fluctuations of Glaciers database of the World Glacier Monitoring Service. As a contribution to infrastructure for glacier monitoring, the Working Group intends to increase the number and scope of these linkages in future releases. Fabien Maussion (University of Innsbruck) has a student who will work on this expansion.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Work on convergence between the Randolph dataset and the GLIMS Glacier Database is also proceeding. Randolph coverage of New Zealand, the Greenland Periphery, and the Antarctic and Subantarctic glaciers has already been added to GLIMS, and inclusion of other regions is well advanced. Bruce Raup will give occasional progress reports on this aspect of the convergence. Future submissions to the two data sources will be handled in parallel.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">An important point for those whose contributions to the Randolph inventory are replaced in new versions is that the Working Group will ensure that they do not disappear. They will be transferred to GLIMS if they are not there already.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There is lots more work ongoing to make the RGI and GLIMS more compatible with each other and to make sure that the strengths of the two data sources – a complete, one-time, version-controlled snapshot of glacier polygons with standard attributes, as opposed to a rich, diverse, multi-temporal resource of digital glacier data of all kinds – can be exploited to the full.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">One of the outcomes of a workshop on the future of the RGI, held in Prague at the IUGG on 24 June, was the establishment of a number of subgroups to consider special problems:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Differences between Large-scale Inventories (F. Paul)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Regions of Concern (G. Cogley)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Linkages between Databases (G. Cogley)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Enlarged Randolph Attribute Set (R. Hock)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">These subgroups (convenors named in parentheses) are to report by December 2015 and are described in more detail in the attachment. There is no restriction on membership, and if you would like to help you will be very welcome. Let us know!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We hope that version 5.0 of the Randolph inventory will be useful to many of you and that you will continue to make the fruits of your work available for the advancement of glaciology.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">With best wishes,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoPlainText"><span lang="EN-GB">Working Group on the Randolph Glacier Inventory and Infrastructure for Glacier Monitoring,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoPlainText"><span lang="EN-GB">International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoPlainText"><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.cryosphericsciences.org/wg_randGlacierInv.html">http://www.cryosphericsciences.org/wg_randGlacierInv.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoPlainText"><span lang="EN-GB"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> Graham Cogley and Regine Hock (Co-chairs),<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Etienne Berthier, Andrew Bliss, Tobias Bolch, Koji Fujita, Alex Gardner, Matthias Huss, Georg Kaser, Christian Kienholz, Anil Kulkarni, Shiyin Liu, Christopher Nuth, Ben Marzeion, Takayuki Nuimura, Frank Paul, Valentina Radic, Bruce Raup, Akiko Sakai, Donghui Shangguan and Arun Shrestha.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>